Home Bistro Review 2024: Quick Gourmet Meals

Overview

Home Bistro is a gourmet service focusing on prepared meals by renowned chefs. I’ve researched plenty of meal delivery services before, but I had some misgivings about trying Home Bistro. I’d always associated ready meals with frozen supermarket dinners and I’d yet to try one I could describe as “gourmet” in taste.

Still, I placed my Home Bistro order with an open mind, and it didn’t disappoint. The food certainly lived up to its gourmet marketing, and it couldn’t have been easier to make, taking just a few minutes in the microwave. There’s no subscription, and you can also order just one meal to try, which is a low-risk way to sample a new service.

While I enjoyed my experience, this service won’t be right for everyone. Home Bistro caters to a few different diets, but there are limitations when it comes to allergies, and many will find the pricing restrictive. Read on for my full, tried-and-tested review.

What I liked

• Free shipping on all orders

• Meal prep is quick and easy

• There’s a unique Cancer Support dietary option

What I didn’t like

• Meals are expensive

• You don’t get to choose which meals you get in each Meal Combo

• The portion sizes are small

Home Bistro Is Best For

• People who want high-quality food, with no cooking required

• People who want gourmet meals for special occasions

• People who want a foolproof way to stick to diets like low-sodium, heart-healthy, or vegetarian

What’s on Home Bistro’s Menu

The Home Bistro menu offers collections from 3 well-regarded chefs – Cat Cora,  Daina Falk, and Claudia Sandoval – and it has plans to expand to include additional chefs soon. You can search the menu by chef if you have a favorite.

Meals can be ordered singularly or in Meal Combos, which come in groups of 6, 7, 10, 12, or 20. As with many services, the more meals you order, the lower the price per serving.

The menu caters to a wide range of dietary preferences, including:

• Diabetic Friendly

• Family Meal

• Healthy Gourmet

• Heart Friendly

• Heart Healthy

• Lower Sodium

• Vegetarian

There are useful allergen filters when you browse individual meals, but you can’t filter the Meal Combos in the same way.

Instead, you’ll have to check through the ingredients and allergens present in each meal. That can be tiresome and time-consuming if you’re choosing one of the larger Meal Combos, where you may have to check up to 20 recipes.

Here’s a quick summary of Home Bistro.

Home Bistro Unboxing

As I mentioned earlier, Home Bistro gives you the option to order just 1 single meal, which is what I did. The single meal came in an insulated foil sleeve with an ice pack to keep it cold, which worked well. It arrived shortly after lunchtime, so I decided to have it for dinner that same night and kept the meal in the fridge until then. 

As it was a prepared meal, there really wasn’t any prep work required when dinner time rolled around. I won’t go as far as to say it’s completely foolproof because I still managed to goof it up and took the plastic film half off before I realized it was supposed to stay on. Oops! Then, it went straight in the microwave.

The sleeve could go in with the rest of my recyclables, and the ice pack was small enough that it was easily reusable. If you’re ordering meals regularly, though, you might struggle to reuse that many ice packs. 

Other companies do more in this arena. In particular, Marley Spoon is carbon-neutral and devotes a page of its site to information on recycling and reusing materials. There’s no comparable page on the Home Bistro site and packaging details aren’t covered in the FAQs.

Cooking (and Eating) with Home Bistro

I tried the Lemon-Caper Piccata Steak with Roasted Garlic Marbled Potatoes and Tunisian Cauliflower Gratin. Despite the fact that I microwaved the food (and messed up the ridiculously simple prep instructions), it turned out delicious. I usually find microwaving food – meat especially – can make it rubbery and bland. That wasn’t the case with Home Bistro.

My only issue was that the portion was too small. If you’ve ever been to a fancy restaurant, you’ll know that gourmet food portions do tend to run small. I’m a 220+ lb guy who stands a little over 6 feet tall with a pretty big appetite, so I guess portion size is destined to be a problem for me!

In terms of quality, though, I would recommend Home Bistro’s meals to anyone.

Shipping & Delivery

The delivery service was excellent. I made an order on a Thursday night and it arrived the following Tuesday afternoon. Home Bistro uses FedEx to ship its orders.

Home Bistro offers free shipping (even on small orders like my single meal), but it charges a small fee for route insurance ($0.98).

Customer Service

I ordered a second meal to test out some more of the features of the site, including the cancellation process. And I have to say, I have mixed feelings about Home Bistro’s Customer Service.

My issue is with the real-time support. When I wanted to cancel my second order, I searched the Home Bistro contact page, expecting to find a quick and easy option. Instead, all I found was a form and a promise that someone would try to get back to me within 24 hours.

When it comes to cancellations, 24 hours can be a long time to wait. There was no phone number or live chat option. For comparison, HelloFresh has a fast and efficient customer service team.

I spent a lot of time looking for a way to cancel my second order. I finally had to send the email. Home Bistro canceled the order pretty quickly and I wasn’t charged for something I didn’t want, but in my opinion, the site should have had a much more streamlined process.

Home Bistro Prices

Home Bistro is more expensive than other prepared meal delivery services like Freshly or Sunbasket. Presumably, this is because Home Bistro offers chef-prepared, gourmet meals.

Home Bistro’s lunch bowls start at around $13 apiece for an order of 10. The least expensive vegetarian dinners can be purchased in groups of 10 for $161.66 or roughly $16 a meal. This is significantly more expensive than Factor, which has prepared meals starting from $10.49 per serving.

Many meal delivery services charge for shipping, but Home Bistro does not. However, the savings there don’t compensate for the higher prices of the Home Bistro meals.

Home Bistro Subscription

How to Sign Up 

To sign up, click the login link at the top right corner of the homepage. At the bottom, click Sign up to go to the Create Account page, where you’ll need to fill out your name, email, and password. Then hit the Sign Up button. 

You’ll be emailed an activation link that’s good for a few hours. Click on it, and you’re good to go! Now you can log in to view your orders.

Managing Your Subscription

You can pick and choose meals between the different Meal Combos as often as you like. There’s no subscription to sign up for meals on a regular basis. This makes Home Bistro one of the more flexible services out there. It’s great if you want to supplement your diet with the odd gourmet meal for a special occasion. 

Cancellations

While there’s no subscription to pause, I covered how to cancel an individual order above, and I wrote a separate blog all about how to cancel your account completely.

Home Bistro vs. Other Meal Delivery Services

Here’s how Home Bistro’s offerings compare with 3 similar alternatives: Freshly, Sunbasket, and Marley Spoon.

The Bottom Line

I found the food at Home Bistro delicious, but expensive – it markets itself as gourmet food, after all. The portion size was also gourmet, meaning it was far too small for my appetite. The site is easy to use, and with no subscription model tying you down, it’s really easy to try out with no strings attached, so you can see if the portions work for you.

Home Bistro is good for many different diets, but you can't choose what's in the Meal Combos. This might be a problem for fussy eaters or those with restrictions. You can order some meals on their own. If you're happy to pay a bit more for quick and fancy meals, you might like Home Bistro.

FAQ 

How Are Home Bistro Meals Delivered?

Home Bistro meals are delivered to your address via Fed Ex. They’re also shipped “Driver Release” meaning that no signature is required. Meals will be delivered to your doorstep in a package kept cool with ice.

Is a Home Delivery Service Worth It?

Meal delivery services save you time and energy by removing much of the burden of meal planning and preparation. Prepared meal delivery services like BistroMD are awesome in this regard. BistroMD meals can be prepared in under 15 minutes in the oven, and in less than 5 in the microwave.